


harboring

by akitania (spacehairdresser)



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Implied Signet/Polyphony, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 00:03:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/akitania
Summary: Signet passes time on Gift-3. Time passes her as well, as usual.





	harboring

**Author's Note:**

> Just a tiny little thing written for a tumblr prompt [here!](http://akitania.tumblr.com/post/174180072906/7-for-any-twilight-mirage-ship)

There was down on her arms, a remarkably stark white not at all like the mottled feathers framing her face; Signet kept watching her forearms instead of her hands as she moved. It was possible, she considered, she had only chosen to cut vegetables to accompany her own voice, to use the sharp and steady thud as percussion. That was what  _people_  did, made their own accompaniment.

Laureate Mantle was the name the woman gave, and Signet wasn’t sure if it was the name she used every day, every work day, or just for this evening. For her part, she hadn’t given any name at all. That is, Laureate knew it, but it wouldn’t come up. She sang more than she spoke, anyway.

Dusk was falling outside, the true dusk that still seemed unfamiliar, and Signet was quietly grateful the windows were plain glass. It wouldn’t be the same without a city outside, or if Laureate’s apartment weren’t just an apartment, with grumbling appliances and sticky spots on the countertop. Her rooms on Thyrsus had been similar, once. She’d fucked a girl up against one of the tall windows there, once, because  _that_  transparency had been a digital rendering.

Laureate kept singing and kept chopping, the unfamiliar orange vegetable falling into finer and finer slices. She should have asked what it was called, if it was native only to Gift-3, but instead she darted out a hand to snatch one of the slivers and pop it into her mouth. Perhaps reflexes honed over centuries should be put to better use than avoiding a kitchen knife, but she was working for the moment to put centuries out of her mind.

“It’s no good until it’s boiled down,” Laureate said, smiling, which turned out to be true; Signet almost gagged trying to swallow away the bitterness. “Are you impatient?”

“Rarely.” As they say, time is long.

Laureate rested a hand on her throat, and Signet worried with a guilty start that she might be tiring her voice. “I don’t mind if you are,” she said, and her eyes actually sparkled, some implant that reminded Signet of old trends. 

She took that as a cue, since she was paying, after all, for a holistic experience, and leaned up and across the countertop to kiss her. Her left palm rested squarely in a patch where some juice, likely, had dried uncleaned, and her mouth was still sour. Someone looking in might see her, perhaps recognize the woman who’d shaken Advent’s hand – that was paranoia, but the system had seemed small, lately.

So she shrunk it still, exiling everything outside the humming kitchen to cup a sticky hand around another woman’s neck. Time would never be any shorter than it was.


End file.
